Rebuilding the Ship
by otherrealmwriter
Summary: Tak finally makes it back to Earth to take her ship back 5 years after Dib had stopped her originally. Things start out confrontational but does it get better for them? Told from Tak's POV Slight DATR fluff Written for the WA random opening challenge


**I don't own Invader Zim okay? This is for the Writer's Anonymous Random Line Opener challenge. I highly recommend this forum if you are looking to improve your writing or just hang. But enough of this A/N, on with the fic.**

All right, maybe it wasn't the best way to start off a conversation. But how else was I going to get my ship back? I had ejected from it to get to safety after Mimi had ruined everything and out of all the blasted places in the Universe it could come to, it comes here. Here! To his house! If there was a God, they must have some bizarre sense of humor. And I could tell that years had passed when I did finally get back to Earth. The date on the newspaper read of a time about 5 years in the future. But what have you, time skips on a planet are something you just deal with as an Invader. Which I should have been!

Anyway, I walked up to his door, made sure my disguise generator still worked and looked around. I knew I looked like an average human 12 year old female when I first came and 5 earth years had passed, so I made myself look like a 17 year old female human so no one would suspect a thing. I knocked on his door and surprisingly, it was his father, there in the flesh, not on some floating telescreen as I first saw him. This got me nervous as this man was claimed to be one of the top scientists of this planet.

"Oh, hello young lady, who might you be?" Professor Membrane said with a jovial arrogant tone. "Are you a friend of my daughter's?"

"No, I need to speak to Dib." I said, trying not to get him suspicious of me.

"Wait, a girl wants to talk to Dib?" His sister Gaz, a year younger than him said looking up from her game.

"Yes daughter, it seems that is the case. He's in the garage working on his project he won't tell me about. Anti-matter engines, interstellar travel, very enterprising." Professor Membrane said. You can just follow me to the garage and I'll let him know you are here."

"Anti matter engines?" I said knowing what he was talking about. My ship. I had installed a tracking device for situations like this and if he was working on it, he was bound to find something. I find it humorous that a man that refuses to acknowledge that aliens could exist would want his son working on interstellar travel. I voiced this to him. "You don't believe in aliens do you sir?" I said acting like a polite and curious young woman that any father would want his son to hang out with. I need to be on his good side to get to Dib.

"No. There is absolutely no way that even if aliens did exist, that they could break the speed of light and come all the way here. Our closest galaxy and planet that could support life is the Andromeda Galaxy and that is 2.537 Million light years away. And bear in mind young lady that the speed of light is about 5.88 trillion miles. So, yes, it is impossible for another species to visit our planet. Oh sure many have tried but come up with nothing." Professor Membrane said as he approached the garage. "We have so many issues on Earth to worry about anyway. Real Science." At this he pulled out a ventriloquist dummy of himself. Acting like he never displayed a huge ego he continued, "Maybe if a young lady like you talks to him Dib will stop being interested in such crazy things. He is growing up after all."

"Yeah, that he is." I said, keeping the scientist human fooled.

"Dib, you have a visitor." Professor Membrane said as he knocked on the door to the garage.

"If it's Zim, tell him I know what he's doing with Gaz." Dib yelled.

"No, it's not you little foreign friend." Professor Membrane sighed. "A girl has come by wanting to talk to you. A girl your age actually."

"What?" Dib said as he opened the door. I could see that he had indeed matured over the time I was floating in space. Knowing that humans tended to look a bit like their parental figures and the males took after their fathers more often than not, I could see he had finished what they had called 'puberty' in Skool. At that time I was in a 6th grade class and they said that horrible things and changes would begin. The school system made it sound like some awful metamorphosis was going to happen, but not much outward change did seem to have occurred. Sure he did have a slight mustache growing in spots on his face, almost as if he was trying to grow it for some weird reason and he was definitely taller, nearly as tall as his father at this point, but he was still a skinny lanky human. Because of this, I could see what was rightfully mine behind him. My ship. In pieces he probably knew nothing about and messed up beyond repair. It was rough just getting the salvaged parts to function to get to this backwards planet in the first place. "Tak?" He said staring at me.

"You know her son?" Professor Membrane said, almost happy sounding in his question.

"We've met." Dib said.

"Well have fun you two. And be safe! You are only 17 after all." Professor Membrane said as he pushed me into the garage and shut the door behind me.

"So, are we going to have to do this the easy way and you surrender to me or am I going to have to force it out of you?" I said, wanting my ship back. It was mine and it was not going to be in some dumb stink monkey's possession, even if this one was smarter than the others and could not be controlled by my hypnotic suggestion ray.

"You're not forcing anything out of me! It's mine and I won't give this precious thing to anyone who just demands it!" Dib yelled.

"Now now son, remember what they taught in health class!" Professor Membrane said through the door.

"I thought you went to your own labs!" Dib yelled looking rather embrassed.

"I will. Can you blame a father for wanting to make sure his son's first date goes well?" Professor Membrane said.

"DAD!" Dib yelled now turning very red in the face.

"Are you alright?" I dropped my tone. "You look like you may be getting sick." Why was I suddenly caring about the human who helped to thrawart my plans to be an Invader? I just thought of it as there was no honor in taking something from a physically ill opponent.

"No, I'm fine. Dad was just implying you wanted to have relations with me." Dib said sitting in what was my cockpit. Although it looks like he made it a little bigger to fit his tall frame. I was impressed.

"Relations? You mean intercourse?" I asked slightly taken aback.

"Yeah." Dib said.

"NO! MY WORD NO!" I yelled noticing him look slightly crestfallen. "Don't take that the wrong way, I didn't mean anything against your ability to procreate with others..."

"You're as bad as him when it comes to talking about things of that nature. At least as an Irken you have an excuse." Dib laughed.

"And why is there hair over your upper lip like that? I know human males get hairier as they mature but humans can also shave it off." I said, growing curious at how Dib had changed over the years. I knew that deep down his mind was still the same if his father had much the same complaints as the one time he talked to me the first time I came to Earth. "Is that why your father couldn't make the connection that I just modified my disguise to look 5 years older?"

"I guess." Dib sighed. "But back to the fight at hand."

"Right." I said as I pulled out my laser pistol and aimed it at him only to find Dib laughing at it. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. I'm used to that by now. You know how many times Zim's pulled one on me?"

"A lot. But I am better than him." I said standing my ground. "Now give me back my ship or you'll find out what a competent Irken Invader can do!"

"Oh yeah?" He said as he jumped over, grabbed the muzzle and twisted out of my hand and threw it on the ground. I stared in shock. "Zim looked just like that when I did that. Amazing what basic self defense courses can teach you. He picked up a wrench and held it in front of himself in a defensive position. "You are not getting your ship back. It fell into my yard."

"Isn't the house technically your father's property, so by that it would be his?" I said knowing this would aggravate him even more.

"Finders Keepers! Dad wasn't at home at the time and I'm the one who keeps it in the garage and works on it." Dib said turning back to the engines. "I've gotten they are antimatter fueled and mostly self sustaining but how to get it started I don't know."

I looked over at Dib's frustration with a little weird feeling of sympathy. I was almost looking at myself in a way. I recall when I first had pulled that engine out of one of Dirt's many scrap piles. No one believed I could get it to fly or even start up. "Just go back to your cleaning duties Tak, you aren't good enough to fix this."

"I'll get this thing flying somehow." I heard Dib say as the memory sprung to my mind. "And when I do, they'll be sorry. Sorry."

"For what?" I asked, somehow rage going to care, when I saw much of myself on Dirt in this.

"Making fun of me." Dib sighed. "Calling me stupid. Acting like I don't know what I am talking about when I know so much more than they ever could comprehend." He took a deep drink of a Poop Energy drink and threw it aside. "I could win every Nobel prize and solve every question man has ever asked but that wouldn't be good enough for any of them. If I get this going I can prove so much more to them."

"What would it matter if they refuse to see your skills?" I asked putting my hand on his shoulder, knowing his frustration too well. "I mean you thwarted an Irken Invader's plan."

"And it was actually working when I did stop it." Dib smiled. "Although I had help from Zim on that one."

"You used his equipment." I said. "I don't count that as help." 

"Well Gaz was the one who hooked GIR up to control Mimi." Dib said. I smacked him. "OW! What was that for?"

"You keep underestimating yourself. So what if you had help, you still stopped me. Not many out there in the universe can do that." I said looking at him.

"You left a mark." Dib said rubbing his cheek.

"And?" I said looking at him. I couldn't help myself, knowing that he knew my frustrations better than anyone I could ever use to get my overall goal of being an Invader could know. I rolled my eyes. "I'll help you. Under one condition."

"What?" Dib asked.

"We be Co-owners of this." I said. "I did build it originally after all. You wouldn't have a chance of building it from scrap if you're limited to what your father has at best."

"You don't know what's in his labs... do you?" Dib asked looking at me skeptically.

"Nope, I can just tell that man has issues of his own he's trying to overcompensate for." I sighed. As I began to look at the engines to assess the damage, and see what I could salvage or repair and what would need rebuilding. I felt Dib's lips on my cheek. "What was that about?" I asked, feeling kind of happy about that contact, a sign of affection from a human, even if I was completely puzzled.

"I like you. Always have. Always felt we were more alike than anyone wanted to admit to each other. And you must feel the same way or something like it if you haven't just killed me and taken your ship back. You are more skilled than Zim after all."

"I guess I feel much in a similar fashion." I sighed. "But if you want to show me affection like that again, hand me that radiation detector and promise me one thing."

"Sure," Dib said handing me the yellow boxy device. "What is it?"

"Shave that mustache, it doesn't suit you. You look like an idiot. A tall hairy idiot." I said.

"Will do." Dib said. "And hey, when you get tired of this, want to go to Bloaty's or something like that?"

I felt a groan in my Squeedlyspooch. I did only live off survival rations in my PAK for years after all. "Sure, that Earth pizza sounds good. It's a date." I said winking at him.

"Okay. A date." He winked back as we began work on the ship.

**So how was that? Good? Bad? Short? Long? Let me know in a review. I know this was mostly just fluff and not much hard core DATR (and the more into the citrus romance aka lime or lemon it goes the worse it gets with me...) but I wanted to add a little bit for the fandom's sake and for contests, it's always a fall back with prompts if I can't think of anything else. So anyway remember to read (well you just did) and to review. Ciao for now,**

**otherrealmwriter**

**aka**

**Realm**


End file.
